| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: WoT |
| Feel Good Story of the Day: Hero's Joyous Walk Home |
| 2010-05-01 |
| For a few precious moments Friday, the single-minded, everyone-for-themselves rush at Midway Airport seemed to stop to make way for one man. Strangers waiting in the terminal got up out of their seats. They applauded and whistled, as U.S. Army Master Sgt. Pedro Medina walked stiffly along the concourse. They were astonishing steps for a man whose neck, pelvis and foot were crushed when a hangar collapsed on him during a mortar attack in Afghanistan in May 2009. Medina, an Army reservist and a Chicago cop, wasn't supposed to walk again. He did just that Friday, even leaving his cane behind at the veterans hospital in Tampa, Fla., where he is learning to use his limbs again. "It's great to be back home," said a smiling Medina, surrounded by family, fellow reservists, Chicago Police officers and the leather-clad Patriot Guard Riders, a motorcycle-riding veterans appreciation group. Everyone wanted to know what Medina was looking forward to after being gone -- aside from a short visit home last December -- since his deployment to Afghanistan in August 2008. "Everything that's Chicago -- be it a hot dog, pizza, Al's [Italian] Beef," he said. One year ago, Medina was out in the open on his military base in mountainous southeastern Afghanistan when mortar rounds exploded around him. He took cover inside a building. A Chinook helicopter was taking off to escape the attack, and a downdraft from the rotors collapsed the building on top of Medina. Doctors later told Medina he was a quadriplegic. "One day, I started tapping my middle finger on my right hand on the bed at Walter Reed [Army Medical Center in Washington]," Medina told the Chicago Sun-Times last November. "Now, I can make a full fist and extend my hands." Medina eventually willed himself out of a wheelchair and began walking with a cane. Medina said he's eager to return to police work, once he's done with rehab later this summer. Before his deployment, he was an officer in the Northwest Side Humboldt Park neighborhood. "Anything I can do for the department, that's what I want to be able to do," he said. Medina returned to the Northwest Side on Friday -- to the family home in Logan Square. Police shut down a block of North Springfield to accommodate Medina's entourage. Dozens of people came out onto their porches to see what the fuss was all about. Miguelina Mercado, Medina's grandmother, was there waiting for him. She pressed him close to her and asked him what he'd like to eat. "Whatever he asks me to do, I will make it for him," the woman said, beaming. |
| Posted by:Sherry |
| #2 Thank God for men like MSG Pedro Medina. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2010-05-01 16:51 |
| #1 Master Sgt. Pedro Medina is from Chicago and just when I thought Chicago was beyond help--a silver lining. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2010-05-01 15:58 |